


If nothing scares you about me and you

by RurouniHime



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Don't copy to another site, Emissary Stiles Stilinski, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Hurt Derek, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Magical Tattoos, Major Character Injury, McCall Pack, Memory Loss, POV Derek Hale, Past Relationship(s), Permanent Injury, Post-Canon, Temporary Amnesia, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-19 19:56:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18977317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: “Where do you think you are?” Stiles asks, carefully. He still hasn’t moved. Derek searches for his heartbeat as his mother has been teaching him and finds it easily: a steady lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.Derek looks around. Dressers and a closet door and bookcases. He’s never been in this room. “Smells like home,” he says anyway, cautious, and Stiles’ smile softens.“Okay. Okay, that’s great.”





	If nothing scares you about me and you

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to do a Teen Wolf take on the premise of 50 First Dates. Premise only, though; this isn't much like the movie. ****Triggery warning notes at the end with spoilers in them, in case people are like me and don't necessarily want to know in advance. ^_^ Please practice self-care everyone!****
> 
> Title comes from the beautiful song [Oblivions by The National](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D69HB5gF3W8). The full quote is "If nothing scares you about me and you, never put me down."

Derek wakes and thinks, _Way too early._

He rolls onto his stomach with a groan, pushing his nose into his pillow. The smell of it contents him, leaves him boneless and grateful. The room is cool, his upper half bared to the air, and he can hear birds outside an open window, curtains sweeping over hardwood, the faint whistle of wind in the eaves. No, not moving anymore until he has to; Coach always works them hardest on Fridays, and even basketball, when he goes hard enough, leaves an unpleasant stiffness behind.

But… he doesn’t have pillows this soft. 

He digs his fingers in, frowning, and the scent flows into his nose, nudging the confusion down. Safe. Loved. That’s what this smell says to him. Any minute his mom will be tapping her knuckles in a line across the door, telling him to get downstairs to breakfast before Laura drives off without him.

A few more minutes, then he’ll get up. He grips tighter, his claws slipping just free enough to pierce plush fabric and— 

The rest of him wakes in a cold rush.

Goose down? Derek opens his eyes.

This bed is not his. Too big, the sheets white and supple, and the wall—the moss-green wall—is a good five feet away instead of right in front of his nose. This isn’t his room.

Shit. Shit, what time is it? Did he stay over at... Well, he doesn’t know where because she’s never taken him anywhere that wasn’t the back of a truck or a grassy bank, the darkest seats in the rear of the theater where the wall juts out and hides the red light from the Exit sign.

A motel? No. The smell isn’t right for a motel: no mix of sterile cleaners and other people’s sweat, dirt tracked in from a multitude of cities and neighborhoods, and just as he’s squeezing the pillow again, trying to get more of that scent in his nose, to sort through it and drag that nagging familiarity to the forefront where it belongs, someone behind him moves on the mattress.

“Derek?”

Derek’s heart knocks once into his ribs. A man’s voice. But despite the shock, his body seems unwilling to make a fuss. He should be alarmed. Or, more alarmed. He’s not. Still confused, though.

He turns over and indeed finds a man, about ten years older than him—Kate’s age—sitting butterflied on the other side of the… _huge_ bed, holy shit. Derek’s never been in a bed this size; even his parents didn’t spring for a true California king. He runs a hand over the sheets and they slip beneath his palm, smooth as silk. They’re not silk, of course not, that would just be stupid, who the hell actually has silk sheets? But they are softer than anything he’s ever touched with his naked skin.

Oh god. Oh god, he’s—

He’s not naked. Oh, he’s not, thank fuck. But he doesn’t have a shirt on, just boxer briefs in black that he glimpses under the sheet’s edge before the man moves again, one hand creeping toward Derek’s before pulling back again.

“You with me, big guy?”

He’s ashamed to say he yanks the sheet up to his cover his chest, but he can’t help it. Always thought he’d be braver. After what happened last fall, after Pai—

He clamps down on it. Not thinking about that. 

He looks at the man instead, properly now, and it’s more than enough to derail the unwanted thoughts. The morning light throws reddish highlights through the man’s dark hair and angles off the impressive cut of his cheeks, the appealing upturn of his nose. He’s in a loose gray tee and plaid boxers, rumpled from sleep. Derek looks at the clearly demarcated sides of the bed again and back at the man. Who hasn’t moved and is just looking at him with large brown eyes.

Derek resists the urge to pull the sheet all the way over his head. “Who are you?” God, he sounds like he’s gargled saltwater. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he’d caught that strep from his cousin.

“I’m Stiles.” _He_ has a smooth voice, not particularly low. Almost rough, at the very edges. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

Where is here? Derek sits up a little more, dragging the sheet with him, and tries to take in the room without taking his eyes off the—off Stiles. He’s mostly naked in a strange bed with a strange man, what is going on? “Where’s Kate?”

Something flickers in the man’s eyes, but a second later he’s smiling, eyes crinkled at the edges. “Uh, it’s just you and me here. But you’re not in any danger, I swear.”

What good is the word of someone he’s never met before? Except that the room, all rich green walls and white trim with a bay window dressed in drifting floor-length curtains… the room inexplicably smells like home. Like his bedroom smells, actually, but there’s more to it. Stiles’ scent is there, too, intermixed with the scents of safety, comfort. “Where am I?”

“Where do you think you are?” Stiles asks, carefully. It’s a strange thing to ask. He still hasn’t moved. Derek searches for his heartbeat as his mother has been teaching him and finds it easily: a steady lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.

Derek looks around. Dressers and a closet door and bookcases. With a _lot_ of books, actually. He’s never been in this room. “Smells like home,” he says anyway, cautious, and Stiles’ smile softens.

“Okay. Okay, that’s great.”

“It’s not home,” he bites out, rudely, because the smell’s not quite right either. It’s a hell of a lot cleaner than his own bedroom, for one. He can tell with one sniff that his basketball shoes aren’t anywhere near him, he can’t smell the dust in the carpet his mom has been after him to vacuum, and there’s no way he’d pick this get-up for the walls. Sure, it’s his favorite shade of green, but there’s nothing hanging on the walls, none of his posters, no photographs, not even the big family one from the barbecue when Cora turned five. The trim contrasts perfectly, there’s texture to the paint on the wall; this looks like a magazine spread, more like something his parents would do, or maybe his great uncle Craig.

The differences in scent are fleeting though, giving way quickly to security and safety and pack. Except he can’t smell his mother or his father, his sisters or cousins or anyone who usually makes up that tangle of aromas.

“This isn’t right,” he says, unease tightening his fingers in the sheets. Sure, it smells safe, it smells _right,_ but it’s not, nothing’s the same and he’s heard about this, about people, Druids who can warp the senses, make you believe—

“Der?” A hand closes around his, plunging Derek back into his skin. As soon as Derek jerks back, though, Stiles lets him go.

“You’re magic.” How he missed it is a question he’ll figure out later, once he’s free of wherever he is and whoever this is. Because now it’s all he can smell, the twist and tingle on the air, the bright gold underneath the brown of Stiles’ eyes. He’s never been so close to it before.

Stiles hesitates. “I’m an emissary.”

“We already have an emissary.” Shit, he shouldn’t have said that. Who knows what this guy wants? Some emissaries go rogue, some even try to—And yet it’s still a fight to be nervous, to remember why this is so wrong. He struggles, rubs at his face and— “Oh my god.”

His _hand._

The rest of what he feels solidifies at last and time just stops. 

“Just breathe for a second,” Stiles says quickly as Derek paws at his face. “Der, hang on.” 

“What did you do to me?” His voice flies out of control, but pieces are cascading into place now, even he can hear the difference, what he’d thought was hoarseness or, he doesn’t know what, but it’s wrong, it’s way too deep, his body fits badly, all of it is so very wrong— 

“Der, listen to me, please.”

“Don’t call me that!” But he’s already obeying; there’s control in the man’s tone, a different sort from his mother’s. Derek gapes down at his long, sinewed, _hairy_ arms, the arms of someone else entirely. He’s muscled. He’s _enormous._ He yanks up the sheet and looks at legs that are far too long, feet that don’t fit, the cut of more muscle, a stomach that—“Holy shit.”

“I feel you, buddy, believe me.”

It’s weird enough of an answer to drag Derek’s attention back. He glares at Stiles, incredulous, Stiles who just sits there gazing calmly back. “Did you do this?”

Stiles looks down briefly, then up at Derek with wry amusement. “Oh, to have that kind of power.” His expression sobers. “No. Just… Look, just take a second and tell me what you sense. About me, about this place.”

He tries. Actually shuts his eyes before it occurs to him that it’s a foolish thing to do—it feels so natural to just do what this man says—and listens. 

“Am I doing magic on you?” Stiles asks from beyond the darkness.

Not actively. But the magic is there nonetheless. He can’t stop touching his face. It’s bristly. Bearded. He’s never managed so much as a contiguous patch and here he is, his jaw completely covered in, in hair. He opens his eyes. “What the hell happened to me?”

“I’m going to show you something.” Stiles leans to the side, his hand up carefully as though Derek might bite it off were he to displease him, and pulls a small, square mirror from the bedside table. He holds it out.

After a moment, Derek takes it.

Strangely, the face he sees in its surface is not the face of a stranger. He stares, mouth open. It looks a lot like his father. Except that the longer he looks, the more he sees his mother, in the set of his eyebrows, the slope of his nose. He rubs his cheek, dazed; a grown man’s hand rises to rub the cheek reflected back.

Those—those are his eyes. No one in the family has eyes like his.

“You’re thirty-five,” Stiles says quietly.

 _What?_ “No.” It’s out before he can think, spat across the space between them. Derek scrambles back, trying to get further away. It’s the proximity, or… “No, you did this to me. You’re a—” God, he can’t remember the word Deaton uses. A bad word, a dangerous word. Frustrated, he settles for, “A Druid.”

“I am a Druid. But I’m not using magic on you. I would never do that without asking you first.”

It gives him pause. 

Nobody asks him about anything first. Laura and Peter never do, and his mother is his Alpha, she doesn’t need to ask. Kate is the one with all the ideas.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth? That this isn’t.” He’s not going to panic. He is _not going to panic._ His mother’s voice echoes: Swallow. Inhale. Hold it and... release. “Isn’t magic or something.”

The man in the bed with him smiles. It’s soft. Non-threatening. He makes no move, either with his hands or the rest of him, and Derek tries to find the instinct again, the urge to put as much space between himself and danger as he can. 

It’s not there.

“Listen to my heart,” Stiles says. 

So Derek does. Tries not to think about the strangeness of his face, his new height, the weird hands and the beard and the—all of it, and listens. Stiles’ heart thumps heavy and strong in his chest, easy to find again, easier than it should be. Derek doesn’t have to force it, and that by itself makes him wonder. He’s not good at this. If he’d had years in between to practice, to get to know this particular heartbeat—

“You’re not lying.” It clips out of him, half angry. “Could still be magic. Deaton says...”

Stiles’ eyes light up. Not drastically, not even shockingly, in retrospect Derek can’t believe he even noticed it, but he does, like something in him has been waiting for it, and the change is swift and beautiful, flushing cool through his veins. “He’s your emissary,” Stiles breathes, like he’s reminding himself, like it’s an afterthought, and before Derek knows it, he’s confirming it and immediately feeling like the world’s worst idiot.

“Yes, he—” No. Damn it, _no,_ what has his mother told him? If this guy’s fishing for information, then Derek just gave it to him, and for a horrible, bizarre second, there’s an ache so deep and ingrained in his gut that it scares him.

It passes. But... guilt. It felt like guilt and it felt like it belonged there.

“Are you alright?” Stiles’ hand is very near his, but still not touching. Derek stares down at it. Fights both to jerk away and to remain.

“Why do you feel so...” He trails off, at a loss to explain. Stiles shifts a little and waits, and when Derek finally looks up, he is angled a little to the side, his hand playing with the collar of his shirt. 

“I want to show you something.”

“The mirror?” Derek snaps, and Stiles winces.

“Yeah, no, something else. And… and you look, and you decide what you want to do.”

He waits for Derek’s nod, then shuffles around on his knees and—Shit. To turn your back on a wolf… This guy is either very comfortable with him or a little insane. Stiles bends his head, pulling awkwardly at the back of his collar—

Derek is up and closer in an instant, fingers brushing inked skin. It’s his family’s mark, on Stiles’ nape: a curling triskelion with thick, full lines and decorative threads winding off like ivy tendrils, but always winding back. Three arms, three main spirals. The ink is warmer than Stiles’ skin. 

“You’re pack,” Derek sighs, the fear rushing out of him. This is definitely his, it has his family sewn right into it, in the shape, the ink, even the purposeful imperfections on the topmost arm. Derek can’t stop touching it, running his fingers around each loop and back to the center into the next one. Stiles’ skin is smooth, soft with tiny colorless hairs.

“I am.”

Derek licks his lips. The instinct to put his nose flat to that soft skin, to breathe and breathe and breathe, is overwhelming.

 _Could still be a trick._ But the warning is weak. Stiles _feels_ like pack, and he smells—

He smells like...

“You have one, too,” Stiles says.

“What? No, I don’t.”

“Right here.” Stiles reaches further down his own back, between his shoulder blades, and Derek grabs the hand mirror from the bed again, angling it awkwardly over his shoulder, craning to see. His mouth falls open.

It’s massive, right in the center between his shoulders, and dark, fully filled in. It would have to have taken hours, hours of crippling pain. He rubs with the fingers he can reach, certain of its falsehood, that the paint will come off in indigo streaks. But all he feels is skin. His skin.

He thrusts the mirror away into the bedclothes.

Stiles is watching him. “Are you scared of me?”

 _Yes!_ instinctive and belligerent. And a lie. He has no idea if Stiles can tell, if he has that kind of magical gift. Derek musters the energy for a few seconds, then shakes his head. 

“Don’t know why not,” he tacks on, sullen. He picks up the mirror again, fingers clumsy around the edge. This time when he looks, he studies.

“You’re thirty-five.”

“I’m sixteen.” But even as he says it, it’s a struggle to believe. He _knows_ this face staring back at him, the weariness in hazel eyes that have returned his gaze in mirrors since he can remember. The cleft chin. The teeth. And now, the tight pinch at the corners of his mouth. He didn’t always have that. That’s from what happened to Paige, it’s only half a year old.

Or twenty years old, god. He has wrinkles around his eyes, too.

“You are thirty-five,” Stiles says again, simple words knocking massive holes in Derek’s mind. “You were hit by a spell. A witch who blamed one of our pack for the deaths of his brothers. It was meant to make you forget.”

“Forget what?”

Stiles sounds very sad. “Everything.”

It’s ridiculous. Witches don’t come onto Hale land. No one comes onto Hale land without his mother’s permission. But he is so _aware_ of Stiles. He’s never been more aware of someone in his life, not even Kate. He can’t stop hearing Stiles’ heartbeat. Each thump tugs gently at his insides. He can’t explain the way he has changed, or the sheer lack of magic-smell on his own skin, the amount that Deaton has said would still hang on him for this level of spell work.

Worst of all, he can’t feel his mother, or Laura. There’s a silent space where they should be, a thrum gone quiet.

He looks at the mirror and shifts, just a little, his heart in his throat, but his eyes are—

“Gold,” he whispers.

Stiles’ smile is stretched and tired. “Yeah.”

Derek makes himself back away from that. His eyes are not red. Not blue anymore either, but not red, which means his mother, his Alpha is still…

He can’t feel her.

He doesn’t realize he’s spoken out loud until Stiles responds.

“You have an Alpha,” he assures, quiet. There’s no mistaking the sadness on his face now. It’s an old sadness, worn in, as though Stiles’ face is used to falling into these lines. And so Derek reaches out, and… Stiles is right. There’s a connection there, steady and strong, weaving all the way through him, but it’s not one he recognizes beyond the sense of déjà vu. 

Alpha. 

His heart pounds more and more painfully by the second. If he doesn’t find some way to stop, he’ll— “Doesn’t make any sense.” He’s snarling again. He can’t not. “Witches—I should _heal.”_

“You do, babe,” Stiles says softly, and touches Derek’s hair where it falls over his brow. “You are. Every day.” 

Babe. There is no lie anywhere, and the endearment sings even as Derek shies away from it. What Stiles is to him, to this… this adult version of him—How? God, how can his life be like this? He thinks this man is beautiful, but he’s only ever liked girls. Only girls, but somehow the thought of being with one right now, even Kate, feels wrong. To his bones. 

He doesn’t even know this guy and he just wants to _bury_ himself in him and never come up for air again. 

Panic bites afresh. “This happens every morning?”

“Sometimes it just takes a few hours away. A day or two. Sometimes it’s years.”

Years. 

_I deserve all of this._ He doesn’t know where the thought comes from. Nor does he know the origin of what follows: the automatic snap of rejection, self-chastisement, the feeling that he’s disappointing someone by feeling guilty. Not someone. Stiles. Derek reels, desperate to grab hold of the hand so near his own, terrified of what will happen when he does.

“Hey.” Stiles brushes the edge of his finger with his pinky. There are no sparks, no explosions, just an immense sort of heave beneath Derek’s breastbone. “It’s okay. If you’ll let me… If you want. I can help you get it back.”

Derek swallows. “How?”

“It comes back on its own, actually. Within a few hours, usually.” A shadow passes through Stiles’ eyes; before Derek can register how badly Stiles’ unhappiness sits with him, it’s gone. “But we figured out another way. A faster way. Better, too, than the alternatives because I really don’t like helping you break your wrists every morning.”

Yes, that’s how his mother jumpstarts the healing when she needs to. 

Jumpstart _ed._ According to this mirror, he’s far too old for his mother to still be doing this for him. There’s a new Alpha thrumming through his blood. Hell, he apparently lives in a house that’s straight out of a rustic photoshoot, he’s in a bedroom that smells like nothing but him and, and—

Derek stares at Stiles with new eyes. Stiles stares right back.

Stiles smells like him. _Really_ like him, the kind of deep down smell his parents have of each other. Derek’s cheeks heat in understanding. He trusts this man. Stiles. He pushes on it, then backs off in a hurry. How deep that trust goes, how much he knows he would do in its name, is alarming.

“Show me how.”

Stiles raises his hand, the one he’s kept in his lap the whole time, splays it palm outward with fingers spread. In the center of his palm is another triskelion, but delicate, finely inked. It’s different from the one on Stiles’ nape, and the one… jeez, the one on Derek’s back. He rubs over one shoulder, trying in vain to feel the tattoo against his skin. He loves his family’s crest, but he can’t imagine himself getting something like that. Why he even would. The agony of such a thing would be…

Guilt again, thick and potent, instinctively quashed.

God, what happened to him?

He wants to ask. Looking at Stiles, though, he changes his mind. There’s something in the hand raised between them and in the tired heat in Stiles’ eyes that Derek doesn’t want to know.

He has a feeling he will anyway, soon enough. 

It feels like a dream: he’s lifted his own hand before he knows it, and suddenly they are inches away, palms facing each other. Derek stops, shuddering. Blinks. “What…”

His hand is also tattooed, the exact same fragile triskelion in the center of his palm. But the ink is lighter, looking old and diluted. Gaping at the backs of his hands earlier, he hadn’t even noticed it.

“It’s okay.” Stiles stares unfailingly into Derek’s eyes. “I won’t let anything hurt you. I swear.”

Derek already believes him.

Stiles clasps Derek’s hand slowly, settles his fingers one by one between Derek’s and as the tattoo flattens to Derek’s palm—

He hisses, squeezing Stiles’ hand. Heat flickers at his skin, warm and inviting like sunlight, and the smell… Without thinking, he turns Stiles’ hand over and inhales right against his palm. 

No. Can’t be. Can it? He looks up and finds Stiles looking back. “My blood is in that ink.”

“Yes.” Stiles’ voice, while steady, is clotted down in his throat. “It is.”

God, he’s chock full of magic. But it’s latent, not like Deaton’s active vibration when he’s out on pack lands; this magic rolls and dips with the scent of Stiles’ body, as though it’s been woven into him. No part of it is reaching for Derek, straining, trying to smother. 

“And mine’s in yours,” Stiles says.

Derek looks again at his own palm, at the delicate tracery there unfurling toward his fingers.

The smell of Stiles is irresistible. He darts forward, pushes his nose into the man’s throat: a test. But Stiles doesn’t jerk back; he rises into it, lifting his chin and baring the fragile length of his throat, and before Derek knows it, his mouth is open, his teeth long and sharp against tender skin. 

He feels Stiles swallow, the wave of heat against his tongue. 

There is absolutely no resistance. No fear.

 _What am I to you?_ He thinks he already knows. When he pulls back, Stiles’ eyes are blown, and it’s so, so much more than the way Kate ever looks at him, as though Stiles himself is reaching out, endlessly trying to touch. Never giving up. There are _years_ behind that stare, years that Derek wants to know.

He hauls in a breath, finds Stiles’ hand again, and presses their palms together.

Heat floods up his arm and out into his fingertips. If he could see it, it would be raying like a sun, gold light bubbling over. Stiles’ fingers lock between his, and Derek closes his hand too, instinctive, to capture as much of it as he can hold. 

And—he remembers. 

His Alpha is outside, at a safe distance, waiting as he does every single morning, _Scott,_ but he lives in this house, he lives here too, they all do, this house they all built together. Isaac and Liam and Kira, Lydia when she’s home. Cora. Malia, his _cousin,_ Jordan, sometimes, Jackson and Ethan every summer, and Mason and Hayden and Corey—And he remembers the rest: Peter. Their family. His father, his _mother,_ Laura, and he knows, he, god, why he’s _sad_ all the time, but he knows too that there was a time when he was much sadder, before he understood that the fault wasn’t his, he used to think love was, was _her,_ before he understood love, before—

 _“Stiles.”_ His voice breaks.

Stiles’ breath rushes fast, then, a litany of gasps. “There you—there you are—” He shoves his nose into the hair above Derek’s ear, cradles Derek’s head close. Aside from grabbing his hand that one time, it’s the first time he’s really touched Derek since he woke.

Derek rocks him over, flattens him across the mattress and crawls up him, nosing everywhere, loving the clench of Stiles’ knees either side of his ribs, savoring the fingers winding over his scalp. Relishing the sputter of familiar, beloved laughter, as though Stiles is incapable of keeping it in. He knows Stiles isn’t even trying. He pulls back enough to see Stiles’ bright, easy smile.

“Welcome back, dude.”

“Don’t call me dude,” Derek nibbles into his shoulder, making Stiles squirm and howl with more laughter.

He feels lightheaded and plucked apart. He feels good.

**

The tattoo on Stiles’ palm fades every morning. Every night, at the moment the curse takes over and Derek forgets, it sears dark again so that Stiles knows.

Derek has woken on the morning after they first met. He’s woken on the morning he planned to propose to Stiles, and the morning after they had sex for the first time.

He’s woken in a safe house to find Stiles bleeding out, near death, casting magic to keep him safe, and even then, even not remembering, he tore into their attackers full shift, ripped them apart instinctively to keep Stiles safe, shifted back and caught Stiles when his body gave out, and held him on the shredded, bloody bed, threaded their fingers together and dragged out his pain until the other werewolf showed up, the Alpha, and together they saved the stranger in Derek’s arms.

He has woken, broken by the deaths he caused and the stupidity for which he knows he can never atone.

He’s woken an Alpha, tethered to Isaac, wary of Jackson, desperately searching for Erika, for Boyd, and not finding them anywhere. And knowing.

He has woken faithful to Braeden, yearning for Jennifer, mourning Paige, craving Kate.

He’s woken on his wedding day, and made love to his husband for the first time all over again. 

He’s woken again and again and again, not knowing Stiles. Barely knowing Stiles. Hating Stiles. Wanting Stiles. Fearing Stiles. Loving Stiles. Needing Stiles. 

Breathing and bleeding and living for Stiles.

**

That night, he trims his beard carefully in the mirror with his electric razor. The house is full again with sound and scent. Voices on the first floor, Isaac’s TV murmuring in the room down the hall. The leftover aromas of stuffed peppers and vegetable stir fry. The en suite bathroom is still large and white, a stupid move because every mess is so obvious, why did he let Stiles talk him into white anyway? He shakes his head and ponders, not for the first time, the potential of beige and green instead, a skylight in the ceiling, this summer when Lydia is there to help him figure out logistics and criticize his color scheme. Stiles comes in behind him as Derek finishes the line below his ear and slips his arms around Derek’s waist. He rests his chin on Derek’s shoulder and meets his eyes in the mirror.

The thought is idle when Derek thinks it, but ringing: _You should leave me._

“No,” Stiles says.

Derek could swear his heart pauses. “No?”

Stiles kisses his shoulder once, and again. Again, lingering. “Some days you ask. Some you don’t.”

Derek remembers. He waits.

“But the answer’s the same.”

“Why?” He’s asked this before, too.

“Because you’re an amazing person,” Stiles murmurs, his heart a steady, perfect thud against Derek’s back. “Because I love you so much it’s criminal.” 

He eases the electric razor out of Derek’s hand and turns Derek to face him. “And I don’t want anything to do with a day where I’m not with you.”

They go to bed, a well-trodden routine of opening the leftmost window and pulling the drapes, of cricket song _shree_ -ing in the woods outside, of double lamplight and Stiles wearing reading glasses, paging through a naturopath tome with highlighter in hand, of Derek making his way steadily through his pile of Zadie Smith. Eventually, Stiles’ yawns become too frequent. The lamps go off and night closes in.

“Tomorrow,” Derek says.

Stiles shifts beside him but doesn’t say a word. Derek turns his head on the pillow to look at him.

“Whatever I do, no matter where or when my head is.” He threads their fingers and squeezes. “Don’t let me talk you out of this.”

Out of staying. Out of _them._

Stiles’ smile is sweet. He kisses Derek gently on the mouth. “That’s one thing you never do.”

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

>  **SPOILERS:** Derek has suffered a magical injury that erases his memory to different degrees at the start of every day. In this story, he wakes up thinking he's still 16 years old, and there is internal reference to the non-consensual nature of Kate Argent's relationship with him, which is a current relationship in his mind. As a teenager, he doesn't see it as non-consensual, and Stiles doesn't have that argument in this fic. Nothing between Kate and Derek is described in detail. Derek's condition is chronic and not resolvable at this point, though knowing Stiles, I doubt he will ever stop looking for a way to reverse the damage.


End file.
